Paul
For countless generations America has been a shining beacon of hard work, self-reliance, care for the disadvantaged, and optimism. Taking a brief look at the high and/or low points of American history proves this. A tremendous hurdle the country cleared was the devastating Civil War. Hundreds of thousands of Americans lost their lives to fellow Americans. This was a war to separate America into two countries! It doesn’t get any worse for a country to be divided by civil war, and yet, America got past it, mended the fences, and started on the way to being the leading nation-state in the world. You almost can’t describe what a huge accomplishment that was. Fast forward to the end of the 19th century and the Spanish-American War. The U.S. was attacked and overcame an aggressor from the South. Again, the U.S. prevailed, a lasting alliance was formed with Mexico and we are now peaceful neighbors, drug and human smuggling not withstanding. Twenty some years later the U.S. was drawn into World War I, the war to end all wars! Millions of people lost their lives in Europe, Americans, their allies, and the German enemy. America weathered that storm and took off again as the world leader. By 1930, America, and the world became entrenched in the greatest economic downturn in human history, the Great Depression. With unemployment in the U.S. going as high as 30 some per cent, it was really bad. People relied on standing in soup lines for food, suicides were at record highs and the country was suffering through its darkest times ever. But, with the great optimism and leadership of FDR, we overcame and once again returned to world leadership. Just as the country recovered from the Great Depression, we entered the fight in World War II, the big one. It was a tough war, fighting the Germans in Europe and Africa, and the Japanese in the Pacific. Again, America prevailed and grew ever stronger. The country was more united, more optimistic about the future than at any time in history. As the U.S. was drawn into the Korean Conflict, we faced a serious challenge again. Thank goodness Give ’em hell, Harry Truman was our President at the time. He over-ruled our military leaders and avoided a major catastrophic war with Communist China. The U.S. then enjoyed some peaceful years in the fifties under the bland leadership of DDE. President Eisenhower did however look to the future and warn of an overgrown military-industrial complex. A very wise vision coming from a life-long military guy! Ike did, however, make the poor decision to send military advisors to Vietnam. Enter the decade of the 1960’s. This was a very destructive time in the country’s history. The country was ravaged by civil disobedience which was violent at times, including riots across the country. Between the anti-war movement and the civil rights movement, President Johnson presided over the most difficult times, domestically, since the Civil War. The country moved past that and flourished once again. The United States then went through recession I under Presidents Carter and Reagan and by the decade of the 1990’s, the country not only pulled out of the recession, but flourished. Under the great optimistic leadership of President Clinton, the country enjoyed the greatest economic expansion in its history. He entered office in 1992 with the debt and deficits still lingering from the Reagan economic debacle of the early eighties and left in 2000 with the largest surplus in the history of the country. Bush I had Dessert Storm to pay for, but, again, America moved forward. Bush II brought us into two wars. We are finally pulling out of Iraq and are left with a growing quagmire in Afghanistan. But if history is an indicator, America will move past these last two military occupations and move on and up. Bush II left the country in total economic ruins. He brought us into two wars, sponsored three massive tax cuts, and signed a medical prescription aid bill that cost around 700 billion dollars. None of these actions were paid for, all of them were just thrown at the deficit! Sounds more like the Reagan instant gratification economy with the “future be damned”! Bush II came into office with a budget surplus of about 200 billion dollars, and left eight years later with a 1.3 trillion dollar deficit. That’s a swing of 1.5 trillion dollars! Unlike the past, the country is having a little difficulty moving past this problem.
What’s different today? In a brief year and a half, the country has gone from its usual unbridled enthusiasm and optimism with the election of Barrack Obama as President to the current state of doubt being cast by the doomsayers from the right. America loved his optimistic vision for America. The country had just gone through eight years of the darkest leadership perhaps in its history, under Dick Cheeney. It has now been documented just how rotten to the core this man is. When a hard-working self-reliant nation like America is led by the Prince of Evil, it eventually just wore us down. The lies, the half-truths, and the exaggerations of the truth came to roost.
That opened the door for Fox News and Rush Limbaugh to seize the time and leadership of the opposition. Because the leadership these entities use is based on hate and fear-mongering to whip up their followers, the venom is pointed right at the current leadership of the country, even though it is not the current leadership’s responsibility for the vast majority of the country’s economic woes. The leadership of the new right uses threats of socialism, fascism, racial slurs, national bankrupcy, and an ill-conceived national security plans that will lead to “muslim terrorists” to easily enter our country to rape, rob, pillage and destroy. The troubling thing is, they have a lot of less enlightened people in the country believing this bullshit. Fortunately, they are in the minority, by a long way. But, the fact is, they are there, and they have the attention of the media. The national tea-bagger movement tends to be even more extreme. The negativity emanating from this crowd is so bad, I can’t figure out why the media gives them any coverage. A very good friend of mine sent me an e-mail with an article portraying the majority of the tea-bagger nation as being “regular Americans” with real concerns about our economy. My issue is this, they are guilty by association and complacency of accepting these racist thugs into their group. If they were so pious and America loving, they would have zero tolerance for this non-sense.
America needs to get back to being led by optimists. People with positive visions of our nation’s future. We need leaders with solutions, not seek and destroy tactics. Our country and states, Minnesota for instance, needs positive leadership. Where are the Hubert Humphrey’s, the Walter Mondale’s, the Wendell Anderson’s, and the Paul Wellstone’s of the country? Leaders by positive caring examples. I was reminded the other day of Governor Anderson’s “Minnesota Miracle” of excellence in education using a prudent funding method that actually reduced property taxes. Well, our current Governor has blown that all to pieces. He, Tim Pawlenty, is a big backer of Michele Bachmann and mindless Fox News celebrity, Sarah Palin. What does that tell you about the leader of our state?
Avoid these “nattering nabobs of negativity”. The leadership of the right has gotten so bad about lying, almost all have fact-checkers following them to clarify the plethora of lyes and half-truths they spread. Please, read, study, research, and understand the issues on your own. It’s obvious by listening to them, the Republican leadership and their subservient office holders do not do it themselves, otherwise they would not be spreading the falsehoods they do. Thank you.
Cam Obert
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